AFTER years of undemocratic resistance to Brexit, the Remainers are suddenly gripped by panic at the reality of a Government which is determined to enact the 2016 Referendum result.

The House of Parliament functions admirably under centuries of UK tradition (Image: Getty Images)

That is why they descended into such frothing hysteria at Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament next month, thereby restricting their capacity for yet more plots and procrastination. Amid their frenzied desperation the anti-Brexit campaigners pretend that Britain now faces an unprecedented constitutional crisis. The air is thick with wild accusations that the Government has perpetrated a “coup”. Such claims are nonsense. The Prime Minister has done nothing illegal or unconstitutional.

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Nor is Parliament barred from deliberating on Brexit before our departure date of October 31.

If Remainer MPs want to block no deal, revoke Article 50 or pass a motion of no confidence in the Government, they can still try, though this noisy rabble has shown little sense of purpose or unity.

All the fevered outrage about a supposed crisis has also revived one of the favourite causes of the chattering metropolitan liberal elite, namely the demand that Britain should have a written constitution.

The advocates of this argue that our uncodified system lacks coherent rules and safeguards, so it is ripe for exploitation by ruthless politicians like Johnson. “What a mess,” wrote the lawyer Adam Wagner this week while calling for a written constitution. He went on, “Is it too much to ask that at times of national crisis, we have a clear set of principles” that can “prevent abuses of power?”

This is typical of attitudes in fashionable progressive circles, always ready to sneer at any British tradition. To such critics, the United Kingdom is an aberration because we are one of the few nations on earth without a written constitution.

Yet in truth, this absence of a fixed code should be seen as a virtue rather than a vice. For centuries, ours has been a well-governed, stable country precisely because of the flexibility and pragmatism in our political system. The lack of legalistic rigidity has enabled us to avoid any revolutions since the 17th century to cope triumphantly with the trauma of two world wars, and fully to embrace democracy.

There is a beautiful simplicity about the Britain’s unwritten constitution, based on the noble ideal of Parliamentary sovereignty. The written constitution of India contains 444 articles, 22 parts, 124 amendments and 146,395 words, whereas the unwritten version of the United Kingdom can be encapsulated in just eight words: “What the Queen in Parliament enacts is law.” The current Parliamentary gridlock has not been caused by the absence of written rules. It lies in the blind refusal of the Remainers to accept the outcome of the Referendum.

All their court actions and Commons manoeuvres are inspired by contempt for the will of the people rather than devotion to constitutional rule. Far from strengthening democracy, a written code would undermine it by transferring more power to the judiciary.

Great issues like Brexit should be decided by democratic politics through the ballot box, not by unelected judges in unaccountable courts. We already have far too much judicial activism in the country, with the courts regularly enforcing a politically correct agenda.

That is clearly what happened with the 1998 Human Rights Act, which was meant to enshrine certain essential freedoms in law, but became a charter for vexatious criminals, grievance-mongers and compensation-seekers – epitomised by the hounding, subsidised by massive amounts of legal aid, of British veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan at times unsustained charges of abuse.

Now the supreme lesson of history is that such a document is no defence against chaos and extremism. The US renowned constitution could not prevent the tragedy of civil war, while France’s 1791 code, which created a short-lived constitutional monarchy under Louis XVI, was the precursor to the Reign of Terror, mass executions and European conflict.

Nor did the German Weimar Republic’s written constitution do anything to halt the rise of Hitler to power in 1933. The apartheid regime of South Africa had two written constitutions and the brutal tyranny of the Soviet Union had no fewer than three.

Against this backdrop, we can be proud of our record. The change we need is in the dogmatic outlook of the Remainers, not in our constitution.